Comoros Islands RPCV Jeffrey Barry delivers organic produce to households in Boston and eight other nearby communities
A click away
By Michael Prager, Globe Staff, 7/10/2003
A few years ago, several large corporations thought they sniffed profits through Internet ordering and home delivery of groceries, but most of them failed fairly quickly. That might have been because consumers didn't consider the convenience worth the cost, although Peapod, a corporate affiliate of Stop & Shop, still survives despite a minimum delivery order of $50 and a minimum delivery charge of $4.95.
But what would consumers think if they could get fresh, organic fruits and vegetables delivered to their door for the same money or less than what they were paying at the market?
Jeffrey Barry, 35, of Newburyport, is trying to find out with his fledgling enterprise, Bostonorganics.com, which delivers organic produce to households in Boston and eight other nearby communities. So far, he has about 150 customers, but hopes to expand his service area and add free-range organic meats and dairy.
He's been at it 11 months, and though he's not doing well enough to get a salary yet, he said he's covering his operating costs. As for corporate backing, he says, ''It's pretty much myself, although my grandfather helped with payments on the van.''
Enrolling in Barry's service takes less than 10 minutes on his website; most of the time is spent choosing from among the delivery options: $25 box or $35 box? Weekly or bi-weekly? All fruit, all vegetable, or a mixture? Beyond that choice, customers don't get to determine what will be in their order - availability determines that - although they do get to exclude things they don't care for.
The service can be discontinued on the website as well, though when it says you have to cancel by Monday noon of the delivery week, it means just that. After I sampled the service, I tried canceling on a Tuesday, but got one more box. As with my other two orders, the produce was tasty and in good shape.
''I try to keep the produce as local as possible,'' Barry said, ''but during the winter, it's not possible. Also, I want to offer a good variety, and I get things like bananas and mangoes from Central and South America. That's one of the challenges; they can't always be local if you want organics.''
With its undertone of grass-roots activism, the comment is revealing about Barry. A former servant in the Peace Corps, he said he's long wanted to operate a ''socially responsible business [that] didn't have too much negative impact on the environment.''
He said he and his wife are native New Englanders, but had been living in San Francisco. He has a graduate degree that combined environmental economics with business, but his only experience with food before starting Bostonorganics was from ''the consumption side.''
As he approaches his first anniversary, he's still working on a string-bean budget. He has a warehouse in Charlestown, but does the computer and administrative work at home. He said his father-in-law is ''helping out on the operations side,'' and he is bartering produce with two others who help him with his database and with the newsletter that arrives with each order. His paid work staff consists of ''a kid that helps out a couple days a week.''
It's natural to want to root for a small entrepreneur like Barry, but consumers will stick around only if it suits their pocketbook. To find out how much home delivery was adding to the cost of my $25, half fruit/half vegetable box, I trotted over to Bread & Circus to conduct a price comparison.
Though it was only a good approximation, as Barry said it might not turn out this way every time, the total at Bread & Circus was actually higher: $27.37.
This story ran on page H2 of the Boston Globe on 7/10/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
